"Ah, success. My Berserker made that guy's Servant flee in disgrace! I made him lose face!
Just wait, Tokiomi. I'll destroy every last shred of your pride! Wait for me, Sakura!"
In a sewer somewhere, a man who looked like he did not have long to live leaned weakly against the wall. The pool of blood on the ground showed that his condition was far from good, while the worms mixed into the blood he had coughed up made the scene even more horrifying.
"Just now, you said Sakura... didn't you?"
A somewhat familiar voice sounded ahead of him. The Matou Family's last remaining conscience looked up and saw a face as white as chalk dust.
"You are—"
Matou Kariya recoiled in fright, only to immediately hit the wall behind him.
How could he possibly fail to recognize him? This guy had defeated Berserker in just two moves, and Lancer had even had a lung sliced open.
This guy was monstrously powerful.
"Matou Kariya?"
The owner of the voice did not take Matou Kariya seriously. There was no need to.
"...Yeah, that's me. You are—"
Matou Kariya figured this guy had probably come to kill him. Berserker was basically a chaos-inducing nuisance on the battlefield, after all. Eliminating such an unpredictable variable was perfectly normal.
"I'll make an exception and introduce myself. Emiya Shirou, from ten years in the future. I descended into this Holy Grail War as a Foreigner-class Servant, also as an exception."
What the hell was any of that supposed to mean?!
Matou Kariya remained utterly baffled. Tohsaka Tokiomi, that model student, would probably have accepted such a thing easily enough, since a magus's worldview was not as firmly grounded as an ordinary person's.
But Matou Kariya was different. He had become a magus halfway through life.